Ctrl+F "slavery" "colonialism" "exploitation"

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:Shoc

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    For a history professor this is a surprisingly bad take. The scholarship on how the West rose to prominence is fairly robust these days, and while competitive state formation certainly plays a part in the story it is by no means the only or most important part. Europe's rapid rise to power was a) because of a giant gap in Eurasian overseas trade left by the void of Ming China turning inward and Muslim traders being unable to capitalize on the opportunity in the way the Porteguese, with their ruthless crusader mentality, were and b) because they found a giant fucking "new" landmass to pillage and exploit so they'd finally have enough precious metals to start selling to China, because China had everything in the world and didn't want anything Europe could make outside of silver and gold. Couple those two processes with the never ending drive to accumulate more and more capital, also beginning on the coattails of the massive Eurasian trade expansion driven by Pax Mongolica, and you've got a good picture of how the West rules "the rest." Not "oh Europeans just had better rules of law so it all just extended from there."